The women from the acclaimed swimming team at Hakoah Vienna, in the 1930s.
A still from Yaron Zilberman's documentary "Watermarks"
-- courtesy of Kino International, US Distributor for the film
A film by an MIT graduate won both an award and a rare standing ovation at last week’s Boston Jewish Film Festival.
“Watermarks,” a documentary by Yaron Zilberman (S.B. physics; S.M. Operation Research and Finance1994), tells the story of seven Jewish women athletes who had expected to compete in the 1936 Olympics. It was screened on the final day of the festival, which is now in its 16th year, and won the Audience Award for Best Documentary Feature.
The film focuses on the Austrian national swimming champions, members of the legendary Jewish sports club, Hakoah Vienna, which was founded in 1909 in response to the Aryan Paragraph banning Jewish athletes from Austrian sports clubs. In the 1930s, its women’s swimming team dominated the Austrian national competitions, but its members were forced to flee the country when Hitler annexed Austria in 1938 and Nazis shut down the club. Today the women are in their 80s and scattered around the world. All still swim daily.
For “Waterworks,” Zilberman let these women speak for themselves and engineered a group swim for them in Vienna, their first reunion in 60 years.
“Zilberman brings to filmmaking a diverse background and broad perspective that ranges from science studies and international finance to building entrepreneurship and Internet technology,” says Sara L. Rubin, executive director of the Festival. "In the last three years he has dedicated himself to art through filmmaking, focusing on researching, writing, directing and producing “Watermarks,” she said.
The film was extremely well-received, she said, garnering one of the few standing ovations given in the Festival’s history.
The film will open theatrically in New York City on January 24 (at the Quad Theater) and in Boston on February 18 at the Coolidge Corner Theater Screening Room.
